What was his target audience / market and what need did his game satisfy that an existing game couldn't? Essentially, did he have product market fit?
Did I just waste 3 years?
331–340 of 582 posts
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#332Dear all, I am the guy who shares this post on Hacker News. First and foremost, I wanna said that I am NOT the original author of the blog. Also, I am NOT advertising for the original author. As a software developer in Hong Kong, I am researching articles about game dev and find this interesting case. Therefore, I just wanna share on HN. The discussion about this blog is really overwhelming. I hope that everybody can…
Also there are about a jillion indie sidescrollers on steam. Standing out is important.
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#333In terms of wasting your time, I think it's only a waste of time if you perceive it to be a waste of time. If you had fun developing the game, then I wouldn't beat yourself up over it. Simply because, as you've noticed, releasing a successful game is in general very difficult! The odds are not in your favor. I'm also developing an Indie Game (Ninja Turdle), and will release it to steam but have pretty low expectations on any success. I'm just doing it for fun, with the extra hopes that it could make some extra cash, but if not, oh well, I will have accomplished one of my life goals of releasing a video game. If no one buys your game but you still want to get it out there, maybe just wait another half year or so, and release it as freeware, Then at least people still get to enjoy your game. That in itself is a very rewarding feeling.
Great job on the game, the videos look very smooth and I will be sure to give it a play!
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't this simply a rephrasing of "winner takes all"?
No, because a "winner take all" industry is one that trends towards monopoly, that's not the same thing. No one person will ever have the entire video game pie. "Superstar industries" follow extreme power law distributions, where, due to the low barrier to entry, high ceilings, and limited consumer base (there are only so many hours people can spend on entertainment), the pie isn't growing and new entrants aren't goi…
Adele?
Nearest example I can think of, mySpace was where she got noticed so that dates her breakthrough to a good decade ago.
Adele was legitimate however others have pretended to have an Adele grade story. Lily Allen also claimed to have been discovered on mySpace but her dad was rock and roll celebrity so her efforts can be dismissed as nepotism. Often these links to rock and roll celebrity are not obvious because performers use stage names that sound like real names. Their children don't use their parents fake surnames.
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the industry is set up to stoke and profit handsomely from people mis-assessing their own chances. how so? how does the industry profit from people mis-assessing their own chances?
Biggest example is the terrible working conditions of games developers in industry. These are some of the brightest, most dedicated coders out there, but they accept less money and crazy long hours. It's the same thing with other professions where people provide their own sense of mission and self-fulfillment: teachers, home health aides, VFX artists in hollywood... These are important, in-demand professions, yet the…
no sure what terrible working conditions of games developers in industry has to do with people mis-assessing their own chances. People mis-assessing their own chances are people working for themselves so by definition they are not "games developers in industry". Those that are in the industry are just getting a salary and being overworked, they aren't expecting to get rich from a hit
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#336Congrats on shipping a product!
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the industry is set up to stoke and profit handsomely from people mis-assessing their own chances. how so? how does the industry profit from people mis-assessing their own chances?
Here are some things you can sell to indy devs while they are working: dev tools, hardware, books or online media w/ ads, conferences, certificate programs focused on game dev, marketing opportunities. Then, when they are done, you get to skim big chunks of their revenue with app store, payment processing, etc. Don't forget to sell additional advertisements, to other game devs, on top of the places where you list the…
Dev tools are for all intents and purposes at this point free. Unity is free, Unreal is free, several other engines are free or close to free. "online media w/ads" is somehow exploiting devs? That seems really reaching. App stores might be over priced but they are world wide. Compared to before app stores when there was no way to reach a global audience. It's easy to argue both ways. As for ads they aren't special to games people mis-assessing their own chances. They're just ads.
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait... did you just compare lines of source code to the size of a compiled binary code of something that was written over 25 years ago and clearly optimized for the size of the deliverable? In that case you might just as well have compared an apple to the Apollo program LAM module. It is just not a valid comparison. I am sure that if Super Metroid were to be developed today in a high level language with the exact sa…
It is a valid comparison, because what he made is essentially the same game. And I said that in response to the guess that maybe the 62,000 lines of code was all game logic, which is absurd . Game logic, like, "when the player presses the fire button, spawn a missile" and "this enemy goes up 5 units, then goes down 5 units, then repeats". That's not the kind of thing that will change much from one metroid clone to an…
> It is practically always the smallest part of the final product.
What do you base this statement on? There are several classes of games where this is definitely not true.
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#339Niche markets may be the way to go. For instance, I would gladly spend $250 for a deep economic simulator game. I haven’t seen one of those in years.
Re: Did I just waste 3 years?
#340Most of the modern games I have played have no replayibility, very limited in scope and on top of that archaic buisness models.
I understand that it is very hard to make games and 100 times harder to make good games. There must be a sane method for decent compensation waiting to be thought out I hope